Cupid's Bow
by visionsofmangos
Summary: I accidentally crackfic. With bonus fluff! Anyway, Clint is Cupid and hits Steve with a magical love arrow, but Tony is miraculously a gentleman for a day and Steve's affections are focused on Natasha instead. Mayhem ensues.


It all started because Clint was getting bored of Cap and Tony making moon eyes at each other over breakfast (and lunch, and dinner, and Scrabble, and Wii Tennis, and in the middle of what were supposed to be Very Serious Missions, according to Fury), so he decided to do something about it.

Doing something about it looked a little like Clint dressing up in a red dress splashed with pink hearts and pink frills at the bottom and collar, complete with fluffy white angel wings strapped to his back, and a heart-shaped bow with spangly gold arrows, and prancing around the kitchen yelling something about being magical now. Actually, it looked a _lot _like that. Pretty much exactly.

For some unknown reason (nobody really had any desire to ask about it), Clint was in possession of some sort of magical love arrows. It was the usual deal: shoot someone with it and they'd be drooling over the first person they saw. So Clint pulled his Cupid stunt and made eggs for Steve, looking for all the world like a creepy housewife. Steve, being his polite self, didn't comment on Barton's attire while he choked down the rubbery eggs (unfortunately, turning into Cupid did not make Hawkeye any better of a cook). He figured it was yet another thing about the future – or present, or whatever; frankly, all the time stuff was making his head hurt – that he was too old-fashioned to understand.

The plan should have worked. Hawkeye was Cupid, and he was disturbingly good at it. It all would have gone according to plan if Tony actually showed up to breakfast on time that morning, except it happened to be Natasha that walked by first.

"Really, Tony? Did today of all days have to be the _one day_ that you decided to be a gentleman?"

"Stop looking at me like this is my fault!" Tony snapped. "After all, you're the one dressed like frickin' Cupid over there, and you're the one that just shot Steve with some magic Rohypnol arrow to make him fall in love with your girlfriend!"

So actually, things were not only bad, they pretty much sucked. It would have been bad enough if the first person Steve saw was, say, Bruce. It would have been _hilarious _if it was Fury (and Clint almost wished he'd thought of doing that instead). But no, it had to be Natasha. Who, as could be expected, was not taking the sudden attention from Steve very well.

As in, within a matter of days, Steve walked into the kitchen gingerly holding an arm that looked suspiciously broken.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Natasha did not take kindly to being fawned over, especially Cap-style. For all of his attempts to blend in with the modern world, Steve Rogers was still a man of a different generation, and in his time, women were meant to be respected and cared for. Steve may have learned not to underestimate women after his experience with Peggy, but the Black Widow was a different breed altogether. And besides, he wasn't exactly in full possession of his mental faculties, thanks to Clint/Cupid's stunt with the magic arrow.

"CLINT BARTON!" Natasha shrieked from down the hall. Clint, who was (thankfully) back to his usual attire, winced. He glanced around the room, searching desperately for a way to slink out unnoticed, but no such luck. Natasha stomped into the room wearing those ridiculously high heels and black pants that hugged her hips perfectly, and –

"Stop looking at my butt and listen to me," she snapped impatiently, and Clint hastily retrieved his jaw from the floor. "Steve has been staring at me for the last _three hours_. Do you have _any _idea how difficult it is to get any training done with him mooning over me all the time?"

Clint almost asked how she could get any training done anyway dressed like that, but with a quick glimpse of her facial expression, he thought better of it.

"He keeps trying to _carry things for me_, Barton! Like I'm a complete invalid or something! And he pulls my chair out for me at the table, and he opens doors for me, and he tried to _kiss _me yesterday—" That explained the broken arm and the black eye, Clint thought to himself as Natasha shuddered, "and, oh, gross, I found freaking _poetry_ on my pillow last night! This has got to stop!"

"I'm working on it, Tash, I promise," Clint said feebly.

"Working on it _how_, exactly?" she demanded, but he noticed a blinking light on his phone that indicated he had an important email, so he excused himself.

Not that the email proved to be much of a savior. It was from Fury, complaining that he couldn't get Steve to actually do anything because he was so lovesick for Natasha. "If you don't fix this immediately, Barton—" Fury threatened, ending with several anatomically unlikely and highly unpleasant scenarios that Clint had no doubt the director would follow through on.

Distracted, he got into the elevator, hoping to hide out in his room for a while, only to run into Tony.

"Oh, hello," he mumbled, trying to avoid Tony's eyes. But, again, this was not Hawkeye's week.

"You _imbecile_!" Tony shouted. "What were you thinking, shooting my boyfriend with that mind rape poison? Now he's following Natasha like a puppy and he won't even _look _at me, not to mention the impact it's had on team productivity, have you even checked the reports lately, we're so far behind because everyone's been compensating for Steve being a vegetable—"

"Actually," Clint supplied helpfully, "if I recall correctly, this whole thing started because Steve is not, in fact, your boyfriend, and you weren't doing anything about it, so I—"

"Can it, Cupid," Tony barked. "Much as I hate cleaning up other people's messes, I've got to go figure out some sort of antidote to this thing with Bruce. If you have something _useful _to offer, I'll be down in the lab." Even though Clint was nowhere near the right floor, he meekly exited the elevator and chose to take the stairs for the next several floors, because there was no way he was going to risk being caught in a tiny elevator with a pissed-off Tony Stark for a second longer than he had to.

That night at dinner, Steve tried to compliment Natasha on her outfit, her hair, everything, while she pointedly ignored him. He also earned two broken fingers when he tried to brush her hair out of her eyes and a split lip when he suggested he could take some of her patrol hours for her. "I am not a doll or a baby that needs to be coddled!" she hollered, and then she stomped off toward the stairs, presumably so she could avoid Steve in her room for a few hours. Steve, not to be put off, followed her immediately. The sounds of screaming, pleading, and more than a few bone-bruising punches echoed from the stairwell.

Clint, who had been staring morosely at his plate, looked up to see Bruce disapprovingly shaking his head and Thor trying unsuccessfully to restrain his laughter. Tony, of course, was still in the lab.

Two days later, Tony finally emerged from his lab triumphantly carrying a vial of suspicious-looking blue liquid. "What," Clint asked warily, "is that supposed to be?"

"This, my friend," Tony said magnanimously (Tony Stark said everything magnanimously; it was part of his annoying yet – occasionally – endearing personality), "is the answer to all our problems. And the one thing that is saving your hide from some of Director Fury's more, ahem, _creative _incentives toward prompt obedience."

Clint shuddered delicately and reached for the bottle.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Tony chided. "No, Cupid, this one's staying with me. I don't trust you not to find a way to screw this up."

That night at dinner, Tony jabbed Cap in the arm with a needle of the blue liquid. Steve stiffened, and then fell to the floor with an impressive _thump_.

"Uh-oh," said Bruce mildly.

Natasha, who had been cowering in the living room, poked her head around the corner. "Is it safe yet?" she inquired warily.

Slowly, Steve began stirring. He sat up, holding his head. "Ow," he said. Confusion laced his voice. "I… Tony, why am I on the floor?"

Tony stared at him eagerly. "Did it work?"

"Did what work?" Steve asked. He looked around the room and noticed Natasha, who had been slowly creeping closer. "Oh. Oh, my." He turned an impossible shade of bright red (which, Clint observed, rather matched Tony's Iron Man suit). "Natasha… I am so, so sorry. I hope you'll forgive me, I don't know what came over me…"

Natasha and Tony simultaneously glared pointedly at Clint, who held his hands up in defense. "Hey, hey now. Let's not get too crazy here, all right? I didn't mean—"

But no one was listening. Instead, they were staring with mouths open at the display before them: Tony, kissing Steve full on the mouth. "You're back," he mumbled between kisses, "oh, thank God, you're back… should have done this a long time ago…"

Steve's eyes widened, and then he gave a startled little "oh" and seemingly decided that this was a nice thing to wake up to.

It was Bruce who broke the shocked silence by clearing his throat, and then they all peeled out of the kitchen. Clint grinned to himself and then turned toward Natasha. "So, Tasha, about that dinner date Cap kept asking you about…"

"Don't even try it, Barton," she snarled. "You are sleeping on the couch for next _century_."


End file.
